


End Game

by justlikeabaroness



Series: Folie à Deux [9]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Injury, Discussion of Sexual Slavery, Face Slapping, Gun Violence, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Unrequited Love, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-20 12:00:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeabaroness/pseuds/justlikeabaroness
Summary: He's almost glad that he lost the lease on his old apartment. At least staying with a friend means he won't be alone with his ghosts.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: [Gaeranjim](http://www.trifood.com/gaeranjim.asp#.WANMDuArK00) (게란찜) is a Korean egg casserole that's commonly served as banchan (essentially a side dish).
> 
> A/N: Unlike in the U.S., hearsay is almost always admissible under Korean law. Someone testifying as to what a dead person told them in a criminal trial will be admissible there - in the U.S., this is generally inadmissible because of the Sixth Amendment right to face one's accuser.

The last few days have been not just a bad dream, but a ceaseless rise and fall of good drugs, bad drugs, painful existence and just plain pain. Lu Han's memory is hazy; he remembers confessing to Sehun. He remembers the feeling of the knife cutting into his skin, and remembers Sehun's boyfriend hissing in his ear, "You owe Sehun your life, so don't forget it." He remembers staying as quiet as possible, hoping it would stop. 

He remembers the night nurse shaking her head and saying, "It's not deep. Someone wanted to scar this young man." When he'd seen the 2-5 carved on his abdomen, he'd wanted to cry. 25 is the Triad code for 'informant' or 'spy,' and even though he's technically neither - he's technically not even a Triad - that won't stop tong boys from torturing him to death. But he also knows he deserves it, and so, instead of sobbing his eyes out, he laughed. He'd outright giggled into his hands, trying to stop when the nurse came back. He's been marked for death more than once now; what's another? 

He doesn't, however, remember why he's in what looks like a guest house or hostel, feeling the crown of his head bleeding, gagged and tied to a chair. The black eye he'd been given by Junmyeon had been starting to diminish, but now it's puffy again, restricting his vision in his left eye to about half. His joints ache fiercely; his broken finger throbs in its hastily-assembled hospital splint. His bruises are an ugly dyed purple. He's dressed in the clothes he'd worn to the hospital, filthy by now. 

Lu Han tries to look around the room, forcing his foggy brain to at least try and focus. It's fairly sparse, with just a chair, nightstand and bed. On the nightstand, maybe half a meter from him, is a switchblade, with red tiled decoration surrounding some kind of white centerpiece. He blinks fuzzily - that isn't Minseok's knife ( _Minseok! Where is Minseok?_ ). Is it? Sehun has that. Or did he take the recorder and leave the knife? He doesn't know anymore. It doesn't matter, though; the point is, this isn't the Shangri-La; this isn't Dalian. Minseok isn't coming in to have any fun. At least he doesn't think so. 

Once his brain catches up with real life, though, it's hard not to focus on a sharp, sudden burst of pure terror. The only people he can think of that would go to the trouble of capturing him are the Triads, and with them, the scars on his stomach will be his death warrant. 

Fear makes him intent. He looks down at the chair, seeing stout wooden legs with no wheels; tipping the chair is probably not possible, and it seems too heavy to bounce or otherwise get the chair over toward the nightstand. Can he wriggle free? Is there anything he can use to cut the ropes besides the unreachable blade? 

Lu Han closes his eyes, trying to focus. His legs below the knee are free, but from the knee upward he's lashed tight to the chair, ropes around his thighs and waist about every six inches. His arms are tied to his sides, with knots at his wrists, elbows and upper arms. The ropes are wrapped around his body and the back of the chair. He can feel some give in the knot at his right wrist, but not much. He's pretty flexible, though - and between sitting here waiting to be tortured and trying to loosen his bonds, it's a no-brainer. 

The right wrist is on top, and Lu Han figures it's probably easier to pull it free. He starts small, with movements just enough to move the rope across his skin. It would be funny in any other situation; he'll have one hell of a rope burn before this is done. But the point is to loosen the fibers of the rope itself, so it wants to take a looser shape. Something something science class molecules disturbed will stay disturbed. He doesn't remember, he just keeps twisting. Honestly, he'll probably sustain some tissue damage before this is over, and blood will make everything slicker anyway. Thankfully it isn't real rope - it feels almost like cords that one ties up wood or bundles of paper with. Strong, but not as strong as hemp rope. Maybe his captor didn't have what he needed close by? 

He doesn't know how long passes. After a while, it becomes almost numbing, or it would if his abdomen didn't throb at intervals, reminding him of the scars. Lu Han tries not to think of Minseok - either he's on his way to rescue him, or he isn't. As much as it scares him, he can't count on anyone else right now. He just grits his teeth and keeps wiggling his wrists, keeps trying to push the rope. At this point he can bend his hand so that the first knuckle of his middle and ring fingers can slip under the knot; it's leverage he can use to loosen the rope even more. 

It's hard not to fall asleep or just let himself fall into some kind of trance; it's painstaking work, and there are moments where his brain tries to guide him away from this reality, which he can't afford. Lu Han most emphatically does not want to die; he still has dreams. He still has Minseok. Those two thoughts alone keep him pushing, bending, grinding his arm and his wrist against the chair. His hand is bleeding and stinging, but it takes until the sun has begun to set before his hand is free, even if he's still tied down at the elbow. 

But as he pulls his hand free, he moves the wrong way, hears the wrong thing pop, feels the fiery pain shoot up his arm. There's a sharply delineated bulge of skin and bone at the far left side of his wrist, and Lu Han can't restrain the howl of agony; it's likely dislocated, and it's also now basically useless. He can't reach for anything when his fingers moving causes this much pain. His eyes water, but he wills it away even as he's screaming; crying right now is as good as surrendering.

Then, the doorknob rattles.

Thanking God for his long sleeves, Lu Han throws his arm back down in its tied position, shielding his bleeding hand with the dark sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't want to look as upset and scared as he feels; for all he knows, Wu Yifan could walk through that door, and he'd frankly rather do some disgusting shit than cry or beg Yifan to spare him. After what he and Minseok had figured out?

But no, it's a stranger who comes through the door. He's shorter, closer to Lu Han's own height, with dark eyes and close-cropped black hair. He looks Korean, though, and Luhan says as much. "You're not a Triad?"

The stranger snorts. In Korean, he says, "No. I'm smarter than the Triads." He folds his arms across his body, though he doesn't make any moves. "Heard you screaming. Why?"

Lu Han has a very quick decision to make. "I was mad," he finally says. "I tried to tip the chair, and wound up crunching my own damn foot." He doesn't want to draw any attention to his bleeding right hand or his throbbing right wrist. 

The stranger raises an eyebrow, looking down at the floor. "I guess I can't blame you," he says, "for trying. Even trying stupid shit." He casually backhands Lu Han across the face, hard enough to rattle teeth and bring blood to the surface, and it's all Lu Han can do not to raise his free hand to his cheek as would be most people's instinct to do. Instead he lets his mouth fly open, lets himself curse in Mandarin. Though that gets him another slap, this one sending blood pouring out of his puffed eye. "Speak fucking Korean. This is Korea." 

It takes Lu Han more than a second to focus, to remember Professor Park's lessons at Yonsei between fear and pain. In the right language, he asks, "What do you want with me?"

The stranger rolls his eyes. "You're bait. Duh." He shrugs. "Whether it's your lover boy or the tong guys who come to get you first, it doesn't really matter to me; either way I get a cancer off the streets and probably get promoted. And either way, I stand to make an unholy fuckload of money." His eyebrows rise in something near delight. 

Lu Han doesn't get it right away; he has to repeat the words in his mind multiple times before it sinks in. "You're a cop." 

"You are definitely smarter than you look!" The stranger laughs. "Assistant Inspector Do Kyungsoo, at your service." He takes a deep, mocking bow. "I even used my real fucking name and nobody seemed to make the connection." 

Lu Han can only stare at this Kyungsoo; the sheer nerve of a plan like this. "How did Minseok not know you?" he finally breathes, stuck somewhere in shock and rising anger. Had the SMPA not trusted Minseok? Had this all been some long con? 

"We work out of different stations; I'm up in Mapo-gu and he was down in Guro. Also, I'm an inspector, and he's a grunt." Kyungsoo says it matter-of-factly. "I didn't even know he'd been detailed to check up on both Byun _and_ Wu." 

"So it wasn't about checking up on him?" Lu Han asked, now curious in spite of himself. _Keep him talking,_ his brain urged. _Remember._

"Fuck no. At least not at first. I've got my own business with Wu Yifan. Or I did." 

The past tense is almost deliberate. "Your business is done?"

"Finally." Kyungsoo smirks. "Have you seen the evening paper, my Chinese friend? Oh, wait, of course you haven't. Don't go anywhere." He leaves the room for a second, as Lu Han curses at him in the most abrasive Old Beijing dialect he can summon under his breath. 

It's only a few minutes before the little worm is back, though, and Lu Han settles for looking stormy. Kyungsoo holds up the front page. Toward the bottom right, Lu Han sees the headline: _KKANGPAE'S DOWNFALL: ONE DEAD, ONE ON THE RUN._

"Who's dead?" He has to ask, though he's dreading the answer, begging for it not to be the answer that came to mind. He knows it's not Minseok; the guy wouldn't have talked about his lover coming to rescue him if it was. But there are men who can die and cause instability, and instability is to be feared. 

"Wu Yifan-ge is dead. He tried to get in my way, he swung on me, and I stabbed him." Kyungsoo pronounces the words with relish. "And Byun Baekhyun isn't actually on the run - you were pretty out of it when I heard, so I'll just tell you - he's in prison." 

"Prison?" Lu Han repeats, shock painfully evident in his tone. By rights, he should be ecstatic. Both gangs are leaderless. "Why did they lock him up? Did they do the human trafficking deal?" He doesn't know details; he's been functionally unconscious for two, now almost three days, but he knows what he and Minseok figured out. He knows what's on the tape. 

"Sort of." The other man actually grins. "You knew about that, I know. Or you guessed at it. Well, you were partly right, you know, Lu xiānshēng." The courtesy title is maddening. "They were smuggling girls out of Chongjin, in the north."

"I knew it." Lu Han can't help himself; he'd been so sure.

"Didn't know they were defectors, did you." It's not a question, and as the implications of that sink in, Lu Han's mouth falls open, his eyes going wide. Kyungsoo seems to savor it. "Poor, desperate women who paid their life savings to get out of that shithole - sure, it wasn't a pretty way to get out, but who cares. And you and your lover boy helped get Byun charged with treason for saving lives." 

It's impossible to swallow. Lu Han opens his mouth to argue, to go through the same points that he and Minseok had debated the night before they'd run. But all he can muster, at the end of it, is a quiet, "Bullshit ... Yifan wouldn't have gone along with that." The man isn't - _wasn't_ \- that altruistic. 

"It's true, he didn't." Kyungsoo shrugs. "He told Baekhyun it was humanitarian shit, and they did want to get girls out of the north. But then he told his boys up there to grab the first girls they saw. Young and pretty. That way they could work off the huge fucking bribes those Northern fucks wanted quicker." He smiles, but it never leaves his full lips. "So they'd get free. They'd just make the tong good money first. And fucking Byun and his family trauma bought it hook, line and sinker." 

Lu Han feels physically sick for a multitude of reasons. He doesn't know anything about Byun Baekhyun's family trauma, but he does know that between a man who tries to smuggle women to freedom and a man who puts them into his own servitude, he'll choose the first. And knowing that he and Minseok had _almost_ guessed what was going on ... almost ... 

Aloud he says, "So when Byun says he's innocent, the cops will know he's actually lying? Even if he thinks he's telling the truth?"

"Bingo. You know, maybe all those jokes about Chinese being stupid aren't true after all." Kyungsoo chuckles. "Maybe it was just Yifan." 

Lu Han can't entirely help himself. "How'd you control yourself when you were checking up on the tong? I mean, you must have wanted to show everyone how stupid they were."

It earns him another backhand across the face, this one drawing a quiet cry of pain as he bites his tongue. "You don't know everything, asshole." Kyungsoo hisses, but his demeanor calms quickly. "But hey, since you'll probably be dead in a few hours, or on your way to jail and branded a liar, so I'll tell you." 

Lu Han is reasonably sure this shitbag just likes to hear himself talk, but if it buys more time, he'll manage. "What did you do for Yifan-ge, anyway? I mean, you're Korean. Didn't you stick out like a sore thumb?"

"Simple. I worked for Byun." Kyungsoo quirks a smile. "Fed Yifan all the information I thought he should know, and then called my superiors so it couldn't happen the way Yifan wanted it to. Playing the gangs and the cops off each other was ridiculously easy." 

So Yifan's mole in Baekhyun's organization was actually a cop. "Wait. You're working for the SMPA, then? Does anyone actually get your loyalty?" 

"The $64,000 question, huh." Kyungsoo quirks an eyebrow. "I'll tell you, because you haven't figured it out." 

"I haven't." Lu Han hates giving this asshole the satisfaction, but he has to admit it, because he needs to know. And because his wrist is throbbing and he's in a lot of pain and the best way to not focus on that is to focus on something else. 

"It's pretty simple, really. At first, I wanted to bust the fuckers. I was a good cop. I still think I am. But then I realized it was all bullshit, so why not make as much money as I could before something takes me down?"

"What's all bullshit?" Lu Han raises one eyebrow.

"The dick measuring. There's always gonna be kkangpae, there's always gonna be cops." Kyungsoo shrugs. "There's always gonna be morons like your lover boy who think they can fix it and instead they just get in the way. It's bullshit." 

"So you think you can just fuck everybody and make money on the deal?" Lu Han narrows his eyes. 

"I don't _think_ ; I fucking did." Kyungsoo sounds bored. "It was _really_ hard to cover my tracks, but I still did it. Who the hell suffers for it anyway? A bunch of gang scum, an idiot do-gooder and his fuck toy? Boo hoo." His voice has risen while he's been speaking, Lu Han notes, but the man calms it down as he goes on. "Wu Yifan was a barbaric piece of shit, and Byun Baekhyun might not run girls but he still caused a shitload of suffering. He deserves to be locked up." 

"Such a humanitarian." 

His eyes narrow. "Oh, and you are? You and your idiot boyfriend, who can't put two and two together like the dumbest monkey?" His words aren't loud, but they're acidic. "When you two ran and stole the manifests, I got a little scared you'd figure it out and bust everything open before I could, and then you two would get the credit. Or, worse, you'd figure out whose handwriting the damn things were in."

"Smooth." Lu Han can't help but smirk even though he knows it'll probably get him slapped again. 

"Yeah, yeah. Not my fucking fault Yifan was a Luddite. I tried to write it Northern style just in case, but handwriting can be analyzed." Kyungsoo shrugs. "Moot point now. Yifan's dead. Baekhyun's locked up. You're here, and once he knows you're here, Minseokkie will come looking." His voice picks up the faintest trace of acid sweetness, and Lu Han has to wonder how much this man hates his lover. 

He has to ask. "Did Minseok hurt you somehow?"

"No." Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. "I'm not some kind of scorned lover, dickhead; you might ask his friend Jongdae about that, but not me." 

Lu Han only knows Kim Jongdae's name, not his personality, so he just lets it go. "So you planned this." He says instead. "This whole nightmare happened because you wanted to make money, and because Minseok got lucky and found the damned manifest."

"No, it happened because I wanted to hurt people who deserved it. The money was a perk." Kyungsoo steps close to Lu Han, getting in his face, voice lowered. "Not like you're all that blameless here either, you little shit. I know what you did to that kid." 

"That was an accident!" Lu Han snaps, having to work hard not to get truly angry, to keep his arms locked to the chair as if still stuck there. If this sociopath figures out his hand is free, he might cut it off. But oh, it's hard; the guilt and fear are driving him now. Sehun forgave him and he still doesn't understand why. "You don't get to talk about that!" 

"I'll talk about what I want. If you have a problem with that, I can start cutting things off." Kyungsoo stares calmly into Lu Han's challenging eyes. "Or I could just shoot you in the head and be fucking done with it. Like I should have hours ago." He goes over and picks up the switchblade from the top of the nightstand, but he slides the drawer open and comes up with a thin black handgun, with what must be a silencer attached to the end, bulletlike in itself. 

Lu Han doesn't dare take his eyes off Do Kyungsoo; one wrong move right now could very easily mean his death, and this isn't Sehun and Junmyeon's flat; the outcome needs to be different than before. But even as he stops moving, as his eyes stick to Kyungsoo's hand, he hears a tiny sound, sharp and crisp, but barely audible. It might be the house settling. It might also be someone knocking on a door. 

He stays quiet, and Kyungsoo seems to relax again slightly. "That's what I thought," he says, ice coming back into his voice. "Just sit there and look pretty."

In the next breath, though, Lu Han hears it again, louder now. Knocks on doors in what must be a hallway outside. It could be his brain scrabbling desperately for an escape from a situation that may just kill him, but he doesn't think so. 

Kyungsoo hears it too, though, as it gets louder, as it becomes real. He stands next to Lu Han, reaching over to flick a switch on the handgun, holding it up quietly as if to remind him it's there, that one press with one finger could conceivably end him. 

But the knocking gets _even louder._ Korean voices, speaking conversationally, but there's an element of urgency in their comments; Lu Han can hear harshness and snapping. At least two people. Searching for something - someone? 

His eye throbs as he thinks, maybe, that he hears his own name. 

The human brain makes decisions in milliseconds, but Lu Han feels them all, like every wound, psychological or otherwise, that has been inflicted on him in the last week. If he makes noise, someone will hear. If he stays silent, it may kill him. Making noise might kill him, too, but when death is familiar, it isn't particularly scary anymore. He doesn't want to - but it's no longer a nightmare. It's an eventual fact. 

In a smooth, deliberate motion, Lu Han lets instinct take over; Kyungsoo is standing maybe a quarter of a meter in front of him, all blank mouth and sneering eyes, complacent in his certitude that his plan is perfect, that he acts, if not righteously, then practically. Collateral damage is a fact of life, after all; can't make gaeranjim without breaking some eggs, right? 

Lu Han lifts his free hand, winds up, and punches Kyungsoo's gun hand as hard as he can muster. It's excruciating; the dislocated joint shrieks before Lu Han does, crunching against the metal and skin enough to send the hand flying downward, and he can't even help the scream that comes bubbling from his throat - one of the few parts of him not subjected to what feels like torture. 

But it's not enough, and Lu Han knows it - he strikes again even as he feels the bullet boring through the side of his leg ( _better than his heart_ ), aiming his wounded arm squarely at Kyungsoo's crotch, and he's rewarded with a scream that he doesn't _think_ is his own, even as he becomes aware of the fact he's just been shot ( _again?_ ). There's a hole he can feel now, into the meat just north of his heart, and he knows it's cliche, but he's suddenly tired and very, very cold. 

Only then does the third gunshot come, booming like God's trumpets at the walls of Jericho, only this one comes with cursing and yelling, and suddenly there's bodies everywhere, and sharp blades slicing through his bonds. He falls forward, into strong arms that don't belong to Minseok, but somehow he knows Minseok has come for him. Someone tries to speak to him in shouted Korean, but it's mush to him; he doesn't want to die, but now he's floating downstream, and it's happily, blissfully quiet.

***

He wakes so calmly that he almost writes the whole thing off as a dream. Lu Han can see the sun low in the sky through the window of his room, though it's partially obscured by a maze of plastic tubing. The lights are low, and a kind nurse has adjusted the bed so he can see his surroundings. It doesn't come back to him until he sees a man curled up in a painful plastic chair, not trying to nap, just staring into space.

Lu Han tries to speak. "Min ... seok?"

It comes out pitiful and broken, but it carries. And the way Minseok looks at him, the way he's instantaneously at Lu Han's side, the way he smiles through tears and breathes, "Oh, God, _Lu,_ " like it's the answer to an ancient riddle, it's everything he has ever, ever needed.

Minseok looks exhausted and eviscerated, and there's a haunted look in his eyes Lu Han can't quite place. He wants to hug, to kiss and soothe all of it away, but he can barely move, let alone reach up. "What ... " His brain doesn't want to cooperate, so he tries in Mandarin. "What happened?"

It gets a weary laugh from Minseok. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Me?" He needs to know this is real. "Bullets?"

"Yeah. Multiple." Minseok closes his eyes for a second, blinking back emotion. "Jesus Christ, Lu. I was so scared you were dead, and then I found out you weren't, and then we found you and that pig and ... " He loses the sentence, and Lu Han feels nothing so much as guilt. "You probably saved your own life, screaming like that," Minseok finally says, "and I'm ... thank God you did." 

It's slightly easier to think now, despite how it hurts to speak too much. "You were still there to hear it," Lu Han says, unable to stop a shocked laugh at just how terrible he sounds. "He didn't shoot me in the throat, did he?"

"No. Intubation's a bitch." Minseok smiles, but it's more sad than lighthearted. "One of the shots hit the muscle under the collarbone and stayed in there; they took that out. The other one went through your kneecap."

Lu Han raises an eyebrow, squinting down at his own body, surprised to notice that most of his left leg is in a navy blue cast. "I didn't ... notice?" That sounds bad, but it's true. Too much adrenaline, too much emotion, and at least since he's been here, probably a great many painkillers. 

He shakes his head. "What else?"

"You had a broken finger from before. Your wrist was dislocated - like, it sounded like a bag of fucking marbles, Lu - and they fixed that. What did you do to that hand anyway?"

"Worked it out of the rope." He remembers that much; it's hard to let go of the sense of desperation coursing through one's veins, and the heady cocktail of terror mixed in makes it worse. He still smells blood. 

Minseok does smile, though. "You did good." He says it heavily, as if to make it clear he's serious. "You did what you had to."

"I know." 

Minseok goes on. "Assorted scratches and bruises, that nasty black eye, and the scars." He looks down, and for a terrifying second Lu Han can't decipher the look on his face. "I didn't know they were there at first - they say you can maybe graft 'em, but not now. Too much other shit happened." 

"That wasn't even Kyungsoo," Lu Han says. "That was Sehun's boyfriend." 

Minseok's face loses all color, but before he can get angry, Lu Han raises his voice. "Don't. I deserved it." 

"No you didn't!"

"I did." Lu Han looks up at Minseok, voice firm. He doesn't want to talk about himself; that's all he's done for days in his own head. Going over his failures, his mistakes. Instead, Lu Han asks, "Tell me. They did the deal? Kyungsoo explained some of it." 

"Yeah. It was kinda complex." Minseok smiles, but there isn't much in it. Lu Han knows there'll be Discussions later on. 

For now, he suggests, "Get the chair." He wants Minseok near. They've spent enough time apart. 

Minseok obediently pulls it over, trying to keep it from squeaking on the linoleum, eventually getting it situated and falling into it. He takes Lu Han's undamaged hand in his, but he doesn't grasp it tightly; he lets his hand dangle off the fingers, and Lu Han just knows Minseok is looking after him again. 

Minseok starts to talk, and Lu Han listens, not interrupting. When Minseok gets to the point where he found a dying Yifan in Lu Han's hospital room, though, his eyes go wide, suddenly full of urgency. He's not stupid. He's getting tired and winded easily at this point, but he still manages, "I have to talk ... to someone. Tell 'em I didn't do it." 

"Hey, no one thinks you did it." Minseok interrupts, squeezing Lu Han's fingers. "Literally nobody's looking at you. I pointed out that not many people would be stupid enough to kill a man in their own hospital room, even if they were able to physically, which you might not have been." 

Lu Han sees Minseok look away, hears the frisson of pain in his boyfriend's tone, and it breaks something. "I'm sorry," he says quietly in Korean. He's not sorry for apologizing to Sehun, but he's sorry he went off on his own. He's sorry he's been such a burden. He's sorry to have been the cause for so much suffering.

Minseok just closes his eyes, bringing their twined hands closer to him, holding them for a long moment. Lu Han does feel comforted by what he knows of this man, and he manages a wan smile. Minseok isn't much for words, and normally Lu Han is the same, but this situation merits them. "I love you," he says, surprised at how strongly it comes out, how much emotion is packed into three little words. 

He sees the surprise in Minseok's smile, but then there's a knock at the door. It opens to reveal a short man in braces and a collared shirt. He looks exhausted, but he also looks angry. "Minseok. They couldn't save him." 

"Are you serious?" Minseok's eyes close. 

"The bullet passed through the spine. Basically paralyzed him below the neck. I'm surprised he lived as long as he did." 

"That means we're screwed, doesn't it?" Minseok sighs. "Fuck, Jongdae."

"Fuck indeed." Jongdae looks over at the bed. "You must be Lu Han. I'm Kim Jongdae."

"Sorry, yeah. Jongdae's one of my best friends." Minseok sounds exhausted, even angry. "Not like I deserve it, but he is. I've told you about Lu," he says to Jongdae. "Frankly, I don't deserve him either." 

Lu Han nods a hello, remembering what Kyungsoo had said and frankly just feeling too exhausted to unpack that right now. Does this Jongdae really care for Minseok in that way? Or was Kyungsoo bullshitting? Should he ask Minseok? Should he let it go? 

Jongdae nods back, but Lu Han doesn't begrudge him his shortness; he's mentally occupied. To Minseok he says, "Anyway. With Kyungsoo gone, we don't have any testimony as to a lot of shit. We should be able to close some cases, because of the stuff we got from Wu's office at the tong hall, but it still means Byun Baekhyun's on the hook, even though you're telling us he shouldn't be."

"There's no proof he didn't know they were pimping the girls?" Minseok asks. 

"Not without Kyungsoo's word." Jongdae shrugs. "There is something we can do, but it's actually up to your ... to Lu Han." He looks over. "If Kyungsoo told you anything, it might help us." 

Lu Han looks up at Minseok, and it doesn't take a genius to tell how he feels; the worry is writ large on his face. Still, he feels like he has no choice. "He said he stabbed Wu," Lu Han says. "He said he swung on him and Kyungsoo stabbed him in the heart."

"Well, that's that," Jongdae comments. "Not like I give too much of a fuck about that one. Anything else?"

"He told me a lot about playing a role in the whole thing." 

Minseok nods. "I think that he might have been the one who actually went north. Chanyeol and his sources said Do was gone a lot, ostensibly to Vladivostok." 

Lu Han doesn't know anything about that, so he just keeps talking, keeps remembering that cold little face. "He said specifically that Byun knew what was up and went along with it. Literally all he didn't know was Yifan's plan to make the women work off the bribes he paid."

"Would you be willing to swear to that?" Jongdae regards him critically. 

"I guess. I don't want to go into a courtroom, though." The thought of testifying to a judge and jury makes his gorge rise, makes him reach for Minseok's hand again.

"I don't think you'll have to." Jongdae yawns, covering his mouth with the inside of his elbow. "I gotta go get coffee or something, I'm dying. Haven't slept in thirty hours." 

Minseok's phone rings, and he gets up, letting Lu Han's fingers go gently. "It's Chanyeol," he tosses over his shoulder, heading out into the hall. "He sounds pissed. Hang on."

Before Jongdae turns to leave, though, Lu Han speaks up. "Can I ask you something quickly?"

"You can ask, sure." Now that Minseok is gone, Jongdae's attitude seems to be different. It's colder, somehow; his eyes lack the good-natured world-weariness Lu Han could hear in his tone before. 

He risks it anyway. "Kyungsoo, at one point, called you Minseok's 'scorned lover.' Was he lying to me?" Lu Han looks up at the man, not entirely sure what to expect, but knowing he wants an answer. He doesn't want to see Jongdae as a threat. 

Jongdae sighs. "Son of a bitch. Wasn't enough to dick me over when we met, he had to do it from beyond the grave?"

Lu Han cocks his head to one side. "You knew him?"

"Yeah. But not that he was a cop." Jongdae doesn't look like a grieving lover, though; he mostly just looks exhausted. "Long story. He actually tried to kidnap me to get information on Minseok - he figured, logically, I might know where he'd been hiding." He smiles, but Lu Han can see that his eyes are unbalanced, that he looks ready to scream or kill things. "Kyungsoo and I actually hung out a few times after I made it clear Minseok hadn't confided in me - I figured I could make an informant out of the guy. He was an asshole, but he was funny." Jongdae shrugs. "He left me a letter, apparently. Maybe he gave a shit about someone besides himself."

"It's not ... you don't have to tell ..."

"It's fucked up, Lu- _ssi_ ," Jongdae says. "Life is weird. I've known Minseok for years. And God knows I don't want to be the fucking joke. So I deal. It's not like I sit at home crying." He smiles, but the mirth doesn't reach his eyes. "I mean. What kind of asshole gets mad when someone they care about falls in love?"

Lu Han tries to speak up, to say something, anything, but Jongdae shakes his head. "Don't. Just ... shit happens. Don't, okay?" 

He leaves the room, and while Lu Han can hear him and Minseok discussing something outside the door, it's hard not to sink into torpor. He doesn't want Jongdae to hate him. He doesn't want anyone to be dead (even if some people deserve it). He doesn't want anyone to be in prison, on the run, missing anyone they care for. If he hadn't started this with his poking around the tong hall, a whole lot of people might be happy. Including himself.

Minseok comes back into the room, shaking his head. "Fuck me," he says, sitting back down. "This doesn't stop."

"Hm?" Lu Han tries to look alert and interested, but it's a job.

"Byun Baekhyun was just reported AWOL from Yeongdeungpo Prison."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

Minseok told him about their deal. Lu Han has to be optimistic, though he also has to marvel at the man's sheer audacity. "He won't come for us?"

"Doubt it. Chanyeol told me the tech people went to freeze his bank accounts, and they found all but one of them had been drained." Minseok shakes his head again, sitting back in the chair, reaching for Lu Han's fingers once more. "My guess is he'll haul ass to someplace like Australia or Canada. Someplace there's Koreans and no one knows his name." 

"Probably." 

"Chanyeol said he might have somebody with him, too. Apparently he got a tip from someone at Gimpo that said Byun wasn't running alone."

Lu Han is too tired to care. "I just want him to leave us alone."

"I think he will." Minseok lifts their hands, kissing Lu Han's fingers again. "It's personal."

There's another knock at the door, but this time it's the nurse, informing Minseok that visiting hours are over. Lu Han knows he looks visibly upset as the man he loves gets ready to leave, but he settles for asking, "Do you have someplace to go?"

"Yeah. I lost my old place, but I can crash at Chanyeol's for now." Minseok offers Lu Han a smile that's soft, but somehow made of steel. "We'll look for a place together when you're out of here." 

That makes Lu Han smile in return. "Good." 

Any prying eyes seem irrelevant when Minseok leans over and gently kisses his lips through the avalanche of bandages and tubes before heading for the door. "I love you," he says, the corners of his mouth quirking up as he walks out of the room. Lu Han lays back, determined to try and puzzle through the last two months of his young life, but is asleep within blessed seconds.

***

Seoul at dusk is a time that seems infinite, and despite all the fuckery, the duplicity and pain Minseok has witnessed in the last two months, he feels cautiously optimistic as he rides the bus toward his friend's flat, even as he realizes how exhausted he is. The Chinese are off his back, at least for a while, as they get a new leader. Byun has promised to call his boys off, and especially given his current predicament, Minseok isn't thinking he'll have time or ability to call them back on. He isn't entirely sure what the hell his status is at the SMPA, but he's fairly sure he at least won't wind up in prison. And he has the man he loves, as safe as he'll ever be. Things could be worse.

He isn't entirely sure what he'll do, going forward - because despite the upturn in his prospects, there are still people harmed and dead because of his ignorance. It's not a stretch to say that if he and Lu Han had put things together, Sehun would still be sighted. Baekhyun wouldn't be a fugitive (the man is a twat, but no one deserves that). Yifan and Kyungsoo would still be alive, and could possibly be in prison. 

He's almost glad that he lost the lease on his old apartment. At least staying with a friend means he won't be alone with his ghosts.

Minseok gets off the bus at the stop, heading up the block to Chanyeol's building. He hits the buzzer and is allowed inside immediately, walking up the stairs to Chanyeol's third floor flat. When he gets in the door, his friend is on the phone, typing frantically. "Courier came for you," he manages, pointing to an envelope sitting on top of another pile of paper in the single usable chair in the entire place. 

He'd complain, but he knows his friend, and he's curious as to what the hell could come here for him, by courier. "Who brought it?" Minseok asks, stifling a yawn, not really caring who Chanyeol's on the phone with.

"Chinese guy. Or at least the accent sounded Mandarin." 

Because _that_ isn't foreboding. Minseok shrugs, sitting cross-legged on the floor and opens the envelope. Inside, there are two deeds, one to the club in Gangnam-gu, the other to the club in Yongsan-gu. There's a list of places to visit, to do favors, pay taxes, apply for licenses. There's a cheque with more zeroes than Minseok has ever seen. And at the bottom, there is a letter, scribbled on a blank sheet of printer paper. Minseok opens it and starts to read, thunderstruck:

_Hyeongsanim,_

_By the time you get this, I'll be changing planes in Xi'an or Ulanbataar or something with my boyfriend. It's my own fault that I'm in this - I could have had a backup. I could have written shit down. I could have taken the risk of being honest with Sehun or you or any of my other guys, and then there'd be someone to speak up for me. But even if there's nobody to speak up for me not pimping out poor women, you did try. And frankly, if I can't come back to Seoul, I still want something there that I started. In the hands of somebody who'll use it the way it should be used. Yeah, yeah, assault, illegal gambling, blackmail, whatever. I don't mean like that. I mean like a place to meet people and pick up information. Good and bad._

_Most of my money's with me, but enclosed is a cheque to cover operating costs for a while, or redecorating costs, or I don't know, if you wanna gut the place and open it as a women's shelter or something, that's okay. It's all legal and aboveboard, and it's dated three weeks ago, before any weird shit attached to my name. Just I know you won't let the fucking Triads take it. You won't let anything go on that I wouldn't want going on._

_If you don't want the place, sell it and keep the money, because you might still hate me. If you do, that's fine, but I don't know. I kept waiting for you and your boyfriend to fuck me, but you never did. Whether it was luck or circumstance or whatever, I don't know, but it still never happened. Maybe you and your man are what this fucked up industry needs._

_I'm talking bullshit now. Sorry. Just ... for fuck's sake, whatever you do, don't get complacent. I hope you're too smart for that._

_Byun Baekhyun_

Minseok reads the letter three times, then rips it in fourths and slips it back into the envelope. Chanyeol's still talking in the background, paying no attention. And he's still tired. 

He doesn't know what Lu Han will say about the club idea. But he kind of likes the prospect, especially if it's all legal and above-board. Maybe it's time to take a step back from everything at the station. Maybe it's what he should have done in the first place. 

He takes a deep breath, leaning his head against the couch, starting to think idly of names for a brand new bar. In mere moments, he is peacefully asleep.


End file.
